There Is No Dog by Meg Rossoff

Stars:  3.5/5

Read it if: You’re the kind of person who makes jokes at wildly inapproriate moments.

Liked it? Read these!: Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett; The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

The Book:

God is a teenage boy. He never cleans up his messes and he’s perpetually horny. Will the earth survive when he falls in love?

The title doesn't lie, there is no dog in this book. But there are a lot of whales doing odd, un-whale-like things.

The Talk:

Confession time – this is only the second of Meg Rosoff’s five novels I’ve read. Her first, How I Live Now was one of the best books I’ve ever read. It also made me want to crawl under a rock and die. So, out of a confusing mix of feeling like Rosoff couldn’t possibly top her first novel and not wanting to feel as bad as that book made me feel anytime soon, I’m woefully unfamiliar with her other works.

It didn’t surprise me that Rosoff was taking on God in her newest book. She’s one of the darkest and most irreverent YA authors out there, and she’s always been willing to go where other authors fear to tread.

What did surprise me was how comparatively hopeful, and almost wistful, this book was (again, compared to the one other one I’ve read). It’s not all rainbows and unicorns (more like flash floods and oddly behaving sea-creatures) but there is a playful quality to it that I wasn’t expecting. In the vein of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the characters wonder about the meaning of existence while the impossible and ridiculous happens around them.

Bob, the boy who wins the privilege of becoming the earth’s omnipotent ruler because of his mother’s excellent poker skills, is constantly putting the people he supposedly cares about in danger. The more he feels, the more danger there is, as Lucy, the current object of his lustful eye, finds out first hand.  Bob causes deathly heat waves while in the throws of his passion, and deadly floods when their love dies.  We puny humans can’t make floods and we can’t stop them, but Rosoff gives a small glimmer of hope as the waters recede that maybe our real power is in having no power at all.

I enjoyed the catastrophic twists and turns Bob took me on, but Bob himself concerned me. I had no problem with him as the earth’s incompetent deity; explaining cruel and senseless twists of fate as the side-effect of a completely self-absorbed being is a stroke of Rosoff’s dark brilliance. What nagged at me wasn’t Rosoff’s characterization of God, it was her characterization of teenage boys. What’s her issue with teen boys? I wondered as I read it. Because I grew up with one, and he was a little stinky and could have changed his sweat pants more often and it was confusing that two years when he just grunted at us, but he was and continues to be smart and kind and generally pretty great. All the monosyllables and weird basement smells  were balanced out by redeeming moments. But Bob never has a redeeming moment. He acts like a human in his selfishness, but he doesn’t get any of the good qualities that most of us have deep down somewhere.  And maybe that’s Rosoff’s point – that Bob, unlike us, has absolute flaws, but it never stopped me from hoping he might catch a break and become just a little more human.

If you’re into twisted humour mixed in with your exestentialism, this book’s for you!

The End of the World as We Know It

The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness

Read it if: You like dystopian writing, alternate futures, and poop jokes

Read it and loved it? You might also like: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, Feed by M.T.Anderson

Rating: 2/5

The Book:

Todd can’t make the voices stop. Everywhere he goes in Prentistown, from the blacksmith’s to the general store, he can hear the thoughts of the village men. The mundane, the violent, the angry, the lonely, everyone’s inner worlds are broadcast to everyone else, and there is no escape. The only place Todd can get away from this Noise is the swamp, where the thoughts of the frogs aren’t as disturbing as the thoughts of the rough villagers. If only he could get his dog to stop talking, his life would be okay.

From listening to the men’s Noise for the whole of his twelve (almost thirteen) year old life, Todd has learned certain indisputable facts about New World: Prentistown is the only village left; there are no women – they all died years ago when the Noise Virus came.; Todd is the last boy, and on his thirteenth birthday, he will be a man. But even on New World where everyone can hear what you’re thinking, there are hidden secrets. The swamp soon turns from haven to battleground for Todd, when an impossible thing shows up: a girl. A girl who brings another impossible thing with her  – silence, hidden thoughts, and the possibility that everything Todd knows is a lie.

New World is not what it seems, and Todd is about to find out that the world is a much bigger, darker place than he could imagine.

The future does not look bright

The Talk:

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about dystopia. This article is mostly to blame for my current pre-occupation with the apocolypse. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized my Young Adult reading lately has been filled with disturbing futures, from The Hunger Games to Uglies to Feed.

The New Yorker claims The Knife of Never Letting Go as one of the most accomplished of the bunch, so I had to pick it up. And then I had to disagree.

Disclaimer: Science Fiction is rocky territory for me. A dear friend who has excellent taste in books recently told me that my opinions when it comes to Science Fiction are questionable. She said it in a much nicer way, but something rang true. I’m hard on SciFi. I didn’t love The Hunger Games. I didn’t hate it, but I spent the whole book wishing Suzanne Collins had taken her metaphor further. It felt shallow. (Others have said it better ). Feed wasn’t shallow at all, but M.T. Anderson squashed my soul like a bug by the end, so it was hard to forgive him. I did like Uglies,,, which my friend informed me was a terrible book. Maybe my SciFi compass is off. As a kid, I dreaded the month when we had to write book reports about a SciFi novel. Only as an adult have I started to find it interesting. So maybe I’m looking for a perfection that doesn’t exist, and maybe I’m missing something that I’m meant to be seeing.

Whatever it was Laura Miller, who wrote the New Yorker article, saw in The Knife of Never Letting Go, I didn’t see it. From the NOISE written in angry font (because the noise is really really irritating, get it?), to the poor country boy speech patterns, including intentional spelling mistakes (there’s only so many times you can read the word dirykshun and not get annoyed. Or confused), to the social commentary on the information age and gender relations, it missed the mark. Ness’s bio at the back quotes his inspiration for the book “ Information is absolutely everywhere today – texts and e-mails and messaging – so much it feels like you can’t get away from it. I began to wonder what it would be like to be in a town where you really couldn’t get away. How could you keep hold of who you were?”

Todd keeps hold of himself by saying ad nauseam “ I’m Todd Hewitt”. But as I read, I couldn’t stop thinking how Todd Hewitt, the character, felt disconnected from the lives of Ness’s audience. If Ness wanted to write commentary on the information age, about  the results of our overwhelming connectedness, he falls short. One of the great things about dystopian novels (and Science Fiction and Fantasy, broadly) is that they bring us to another world to connect us more closely to our own. We see a darker future so that we can see the darkness in our present. It doesn’t matter how different the world, as long as that kernel of truth about the present is there. But the rough, homesteading backwater of a world Ness creates never quite adds up. Ness hints at saying something about the flood of information, about the dangers of the collective mind, about gender equality, about the paradox of hope, about knowing the other, about morality – there is so much going on at once each idea gets lost. This is the same for the action, which is often not fully described, so that you’re left wondering what just happened.  In a book about Noise, Ness creates his own noise of ideas and events that can’t be heard above each other. The book messy and heavy handed; as I read, wondered over and over what the point was.

It’s not a total loss. If Ness fails to illustrate most of his themes, the one that he does shows most fully is  loss of innocence in adolescence. I got a strong sense of Todd’s transition from a naïve almost thirteen year old to a harder, wiser just-thirteen year old. Arguably all young adult fiction broaches this transition, but to varying success. If the book fails in saying something significant about the perils of modern communication, it succeeds in saying something true about the pain of trading happiness for knowledge.

Perhaps if Ness had stuck more strongly to this one idea, rather than loosely to so many, the book would have felt more coherent. Maybe if Todd as a character was allowed to shine a little more, was allowed to be thirteen without the clunky speechifying about hope, I would have bought it. As it is, The Knife of Never Letting Go reaches for something interesting, but gets lost along the way, turning into a long set-up to an unnecessary sequel. But don’t take my word for it – go out, read it for yourself, and decide if my SciFi compass really is broken.

Go to Town

Paper Towns

John Green

Dutton Books, 2009

Genre: Realistic fiction

Read if: You want a complex and thought provoking read (with a lot of pee jokes).

Best for: High School aged teens, adults, and anyone else who’s interested in the human experience (and pee jokes).

If you like it try:

Bridge to Terebithia by Katherine Paterson

How i live Now by Meg Rossoff

Looking for Alaska by John Green

Rating: 5/5

A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;

How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is, any more than he.

-Song of Myself, Walt Whitman

At the age of ten, Quentin “Q” Jacobsen and his neighbour Margo Roth Spiegelman, find a dead body in the park. Too young to make full sense of the event, but not young enough to forget it, Margo concludes that the man must have died because “maybe all the strings inside him broke.”

Years later, Margo and Q still live side by side, but have very separate lives: she is a living high school legend, known for her free spirit and barely believable capers, and he is just another face in the crowd. But a night of wild pranking, followed by a disappearance leads Q on the trail of a mystery that changes everything.

Paper Towns is about many things: a mystery, Walt Whitman, the possibility of the future, Orlando, Black Santas, love, and how hard it is to pee during a road trip. But at the heart of it all, this novel is a thoughtful exploration of what it means to try and really imagine another person. The idea that it is both impossible and imperative to imagine the other fully is what makes Paper Towns a very moving and worthwhile read.

 I have been a fan of John Green for a while, having read both his previous books (Looking for Alaska and An Abundance of Katherines). I think Green’s greatest strength as an author is that he is able to be both really funny and very emotionally honest simultaneously. His books carry big laughs and big ideas, and this latest effort carries the biggest yet, with the most success. This book will appeal to older teens (and adults too) who want a funny and thoughtful book that will stick with you long after its finished. 

YA Reads Special Feature: Reading 2.0

I experienced Paper Towns in an unusual way before I had even read it. As I have mentioned before in posts, Green is one half of a youtube project known as Brotherhood 2.0. Green was writing Paper Towns during the project, so several of his vlog posts discuss the writing process of the book. After the novels release, Green did several vlogs answering reader questions about the book. 

The cynic in me wondered whether this was partly a marketing ploy, and while selling the book is obviously an element, I really think Green cares about his readers and is interested in connecting and interacting with them. Being able to both see the glimpses of the writing process and getting questions answered about the finished product adds another dimension to the reading experience, one that I think is ultimately positive.

YA Clearinghouse (There’s Always More to Read)

I’ve reviewed a few sources for this project, but its just the tip of the young adult iceberg. After reading contemporary YA titles (and a few oldies but goodies), I’m convinced that young adult literature is one of the most exciting areas in the writing world right now.  

I have a few theories about why YA is so exciting right now (the words “Golden Age” are being bandied around quite a bit in the media). My unscientific, unfounded opinion is that authors are catching on that teens today are intelligent, diverse, hungry for really good stories, and ready to take whatever authors throw at them. Contemporary YA authors seem willing to experiment, to write complex, introspective, funny and searching novels that play with form and explore deep issues. This is the kind of writing teens want and deserve, and YA today is a great read, no matter what walk of life you’re from.

And there’s so much of it! So much that I couldn’t possibly talk about it all. But I’ve read some really amazing young adult novels in this past year that I didn’t get to talk about here. So, to finish off the project, welcome to the YA Clearinghouse: where this Future Librarian tells you about more things she’s read and  she thinks you should read too.

Looking for Alaska and An Abundance of Katherines by John Green (Realistic fiction)

John Green is probably one of my favourite young adult authors today. He’s written on his blog that he tries to make his novels all-the-way-funny and all-the-way-serious, and the result is amazing.

How I Live Now by Meg Rossoff (Science fiction/Speculative fiction)

This is a devastating, beautiful, intense, original novel about not-so-distant dypstopia. So unique its difficult to describe, but its a must read for fans of contemporary young adult lit

AngelMonster by Veronica Bennett (Historic fiction)

My blog has been very North American centric. This doesn’t mean that there isn’t great YA coming out of other parts of the world. This English author (who I’ve had the pleasure to meet on a few occasions) writes great historic novels for young adults featuring famous figures. This one is about Mary Shelley and her dramatic love affair with Percy Bysshe Shelley. This is just a really lovely and heart wrenching novel that I highly recommend.

Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist by David Levithan and Rachel Cohn (Romance)

Just made into a big screen feature, the superior book is a clever look at the ups and downs of new love. The ‘he said’ ‘she said’ chapters alternating between Nick and Norah’s point of view is a clever device that gets across the misunderstandings and insecurities inherent in all romantic relationships. And there’s lots of fun music talk too!

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson (Realistic Fiction)

An unassuming little novel with one of the most engrossing narrators I’ve read in a long time. Tackling dark issues in a sensitive and real way, this is a great novel that’s earned much acclaim.

Spanking Shakespeare by Jake Wizner (Humour/Realistic)

Shakespeare Shapiro has to write his memoirs for his Grade 12 English class, and we get to read about the embarassments and mishaps that have made up his life. This book is laugh out loud funny, and a great guy pick.

Happy reading!

Don’t leave it behind

The Leaving

Budge Wilson

Toronto: Stoddart Publishing Co., 1993

Genre: Realistic Fiction/ Short Fiction

Read if: You like short fiction dealing with the small epiphanies of every day life.

Best for: Older high school students (16 +) who like character driven writing about the nuances of our lives. Most of the stories focus on the lives of adolescent girls, but the stories are universal enough to appeal to both genders.

Rating: 3/5

A daughter who spends every day of her fifteen year old life inventing stories about her handsome and heroic absent father; a best friend who is betrayed by a poetry contest; a young girl who’s life is changed by an attractive strangers arrival on her doorstep; a wife takes her only daughter on a trip to Halifax that changes her marriage forever: these are the women who’s stories are told in The Leaving, Budge Wilson’s collection of short stories about being a Canadian teen.

The Leaving is different than any other item I have reviewed here, being the only short story collection for young adults. Short story collections in YA are unusual. The Leaving is a slightly older book than most I have looked at (published in 1993). Novels are much more popular than short fiction for teens today. This does not mean that its format disadvantages it; The Leaving is a quiet, clever and beautifully written book about  adolescent life.  Each story is sharply observed and rings true. These stories are honest, and I found myself more than once nodding my head while I read, feeling like I had lived the same experience as the stories’ protagonist. Wilson writes such strong characters, it is hard not to think of them as ourselves.

Its also nice to read a book that is so unapologetically Canadian. Wilson writes about Haligonian springs and Lunenburg summers, about characters who come from the Prairies to live in the Maritimes, and characters who leave the Maritimes to seek other lives out west. Wilson adds an often missing Canadian context to the world of young adult fiction.

However, while I read I wondered whether the stories, which are mostly set in the 1950′s and 1960′s , would seem antiquated to teen readers. These stories are beautiful, and they are about teens, but I almost think they are better suited to adult readers looking back on their teen lives. There is something nostalgic about many of the stories that I am not sure would connect or appeal to teen readers. 

While I was reading, I was reminded of the time I was in grade seven and tried to read W.O. Mitchell’s Who Has Seen the Wind. That book had a protagonist very close to my own age, and he lived very close to my own home, but I hated the book. Despite our similarities, I couldn’t find anything to connect to in Brian O’Connals story. I have since re-read the book and loved it, but it took me twelve years. I think The Leaving could be a similar experience for teenagers, especially young ones. This doesn’t mean that I don’t think it has merit as a young adult novel  - it does. But I do not think it will connect with all teens, and I do not think it is suitable for younger teens. Older teens who love realistic fiction and want their own experiences and settings reflected in fiction will find this book appealing.

 One of The Leavings main characters: cold Nova Scotia winters

The Leaving is best suited to readers who are interested in small nuances and slow burns. The rewards of this book are subtle but substantial.

New Kid in Town

American Born Chinese

Gene Luen Yang

Henry Holt and Co., 2006

Genre: Graphic Novel

Read if: You’ve ever felt like an outsider.

Best for: This graphic novel will be enjoyed by a wide range of ages, from middle to high school students. 

If you like it try:

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

Rating: 5/5

Jin Wang moves to a new school where he is the only Chinese-American student ;  the Monkey King thinks he is the best warrior in the land and spends hundreds of years locked under a mountain for his hubris ; Chin-Kee, the personification of the worst Asian stereotypes imaginable, comes from China to cause major embarrassment to his American cousin. American Born Chinese blends these three seemingly unrelated stories together using the graphic novel format to create an imaginative and powerful exploration of ethnicity and identity.

I have to admit that I had not read many graphic novels before I picked this one up. The ones I had read (mostly in the Alan Moore cannon) were enjoyable but dense, and while the drawing was beautiful, I often found it crowded and overwhelming. American Born Chinese is completely different than what traditionally comes to mind when you think of comics. The drawings are sparse and simplistic, and the layout is very clean looking, with only a few panels to each page. This does not mean that the story (or the art) is in any way “simple” or dumbed downed for teens. Yang tells a very complex and emotionally charged story in a clever and accessible way ; teens will connect to themes of isolation, identity, and acceptance. This book is beautiful to look at and beautiful to read, and it is the kind of story gains new meaning every time it is read. 

Yang won the Michael L. Printz award in 2007 over Octavian Nothing and The Book Thief , both stiff competition, which should give you an indication of how high quality this work is. American Born Chinese was the first graphic novel to win a Printz, and is a great illustration of the power and potential of this genre to tell great stories. 

Romance on the High Seas

Girl At Sea

Maureen Johnson

HarperTeen, 2007

Genre: Romance/Adventure

Read if: You love adventures, fear jellyfish, and want a little romance in the mix.

Best for: High school students who want a fun, clever, fast paced read that ties romance, realism and travel together.

If you like it, try:

13 Little Blue Envelopes by Maureen Johnson

An Abundance of Katherines by John Green

Awards: 2008 Romance Writers of America RITA Young Adult Finalist

Rating: 4.5/5

Clio’s summer is going to be perfect: she just got the the job of her dreams in an art store, where she’ll be able to to get discount art supplies and get to know the gorgeous guy who works at the counter. 

But Clio’s father has a way of ruining things. First, he left Clio and her mother when she was twelve. Now he’s back, and he wants her to spend all summer on a boat with him, his new girlfriend and his crew. The purpose: to be part of a team looking for a buried treasure deep in the Mediterranean Sea. 

So, instead of selling art supplies and making her crush her boyfriend, Clio cooks for the crew, helps read maps, avoids Aidan, her father’s surly research assistant, and begins to unravel a mystery. There are secrets in the sea and on the ship, and everything is not as it seems.

What do jellyfish have to do with love? This book answers all.

Girl At Sea is a smart and romantic adventure novel. Or maybe its an adventurous romance novel. Either way, Johnson skillfully blends a mystery with exotic settings, great action sequences and real emotions to create a fun and thoughtful novel about family, risks, and first love. 

I’ve thought a lot about the label “romance novel” this year in library school. Romance is a difficult genre in a lot of ways because for a lot of people it has immediate, and often negative, connotations. The implication is if it is romance, it is probably not a very good book. Girl at Sea is definitely a romance, and it is also definitely a good story. Like all genre’s, there is a varying range of quality in romance writing. Girl At Sea is a very high quality romance, but it is also just a very high quality young adult novel that deals playfully but also sensitively with something on every teens mind: relationships.  

Unlike the previously reviewed Does My Head Look Big in This  and Twilight, Girl at Sea deals with a teen romance without reducing the characters to stereotypes. Clio is vividly depicted and easily relatable. While the romance is a main focus of the book, it grows out of a shared adventure, and that is what makes this read rich and exciting. Truly funny, sweet and fun, this is the romance you’ve been waiting for. 

One more thing:  Johnson also keeps a really entertaining blog that has a lot of interesting things to say about being a YA author.

Vampire Spectacular: Part Two

My Swordhand is Singing

Marcus Sedgwick

London: Orion Books, 2006

Genre: Horror/Folktale

Read if: You are interested in the origins of vampire stories, and like eerie mysteries.

Best for: Middle school students who are interested in dark, moody mysteries with a historic setting. Because the story is straightforward and gripping, this is a great book for many levels of reader.

If you like it, try:

Peeps by Scott Westerfeld

The Ruby in the Smoke by Philip Pullman

Rating: 3.5/5

“I was living in a devil town

Didn’t know it was a devil town

Oh lord it really brings me down about the devil town

All my friends were vampires

Didn’t know they were vampires

Turns out I was a vampire myself

in the devil town”

-Devil Town lyrics by Daniel Johnston

His whole life, Peter has lived like a nomad. Roaming the countryside with his father Tomas, taking odd jobs in small towns and never staying long, Peter has never found a place to call home.  Then Peter and Tomas come to Chust. Settling down on an island at the edge of the forest, Peter spends his days cutting wood for the villagers and nursing his often-drunk father. Slowly, Peter builds a life for himself in Chust, with a job and a sweetheart named Agnes.

But Peter’s peace begins to break with the death of one of the villagers. Witnessing the burial himself, Peter does not know what to make of reports that Radu is being seen at night, apparently alive. 

When other deaths follow, Peter finds himself caught in a mystery involving gypsies, his father’s past, a sword, and a legend of the deadly Shadow Queen. The undead are haunting Chust, and it is up to Peter protect the only place he knows as home.

My Swordhand Is Singing is a contemporary vampire folk tale. Drawing on sixteenth and seventeenth century vampire traditions, Sedgwick writes in his Author’s Note at the back of the novel that he “sought to capture the flavour of the early reports of vampirism.” Sedgwick goes on to say that “the suave, sometimes overtly attractive vampire of modern myth is very far from the original revenants of the folklore where these creatures originated.” 

With My Swordhand is Singing, Sedgwick de-Cullenizes the vampire tale. The vampires of Chust are frightening, unglamorous and unstoppable. Almost zombie-like in their pursuit of prey, the nosferatu, vrykolakoi, or hostages, as they are alternately called (the word vampire never actually appears in the novel), are possessed of a disease that causes their state. Death, and the acceptance of its presence in our lives, is a running thread in this cleverly constructed vampire story.

The biggest strength of this novel is the setting and tone Sedgewick establishes. Using the folklore framework, Sedgwick is able to create a moody, gripping world very quickly. The deep Transalvanian winter is so clearly depicted readers will find themselves immediately immersed in the novels world. 

The story itself is simple and straightforward. More hesitant readers will find it  easily accessible. Although the book is a return to vampire-tale roots, it contains very light horror. Readers looking for a true scare won’t find one here. There is also more mystery than action, so some readers looking for violent vampire fight sequences may be dissapointed (that’s not to say there’s NO vampire fighting though, because there definitely is). This book will probably appeal most to early junior high students (ages 11-13), although older readers may find the folk tale angle interesting and appealing.

My Swordhand is Singing is a well written book that takes the vampire back to where it started. If you’re looking for a different kind of vampire novel, this book is a great start.

Vampire Spectacular: Part the First

Twilight and New Moon

Stephanie Meyer

Little, Brown Young Readers, 2005, 2006

Genre: Fantasy/Horror/Romance

Read if: You like light horror, fantasy and especially romance

Best for: A wide age range from early middle school to late high school. 

If you like it, try: The Host by Stephanie Meyer

Rating: 2.5/5

What happens when you have a very vivid dream about a boy and a girl talking about how they are falling in love, and about how their love is impossible, because the boy isn’t really a boy at all: he’s a vampire. If you’re Stephanie Meyer, you take that dream and write your first novel that then spawns  one of the most successful series for young adults in recent memory.

Unless you have been living in a crypt, you probably already know at least some of the plot. Twilight is the tale of Bella Swan, a gawky seventeen year-old who moves from the bright sunshine of Pheonix, Arizona to the rainy gloom of Forks, Washington to live with her father. Life in Forks is dull until Bella meets Edward Cullen, a beautiful, mysterious boy with a secret. When Bella uncovers the truth about Edward and his family she must decide: put herself in  certain danger, or walk away from the only person she’s ever loved. 

In New Moon, the series’ second installment, Bella must deal with heartbreak in the face of Edward’s sudden absence. Unable to handle the pain, Bella finds peace in her growing friendship with Jacob Black. Sweet and understanding, Jacob helps Bella to become herself again. But like Edward, Jacob is more than he appears, and his dark secret will force Bella to choose between the two people she cares about most. Obsession and desire, friendship and the lengths we’ll go for love are the essence of this series.

I read Twilight and its sequel New Moon over the Christmas break, but I have been hesitant to write this post. The reason: I have talked to a lot of people about the Twilight phenomena, and the violence of the reactions to it has made a little nervous to add my voice to the mix. People either love them or hate them. There doesn’t seem to be much middle ground. I however, feel like I am of two-minds about the series. 

Edward is not impressed that I can’t make my mind up about Twilight

First, its strengths: Twilight is engrossing. Told in the first person, the reader is immediately drawn into Bella’s world. From the loneliness of being a stranger in a strange town to the first pangs of love, you feel it all with Bella. Through a vampire story, Meyer is able to speak of the intensity and often forbidden nature of first love and first passion. 

Just as engrossing as Twilight, New Moon is in many ways the mirror of its predecessor. About heartbreak instead of love and friendship instead of romantic relationships, New Moon is in ways superior to Twilight because the characters become more real and three dimensional. In New Moon Bella grows up through the pain of her first heart break.

Now for the weaknesses: this series is not particularly well written. Although it succeeds in depicting an intensity of emotion that is felt by the reader, the writing itself is weak. Too much needless description and wordiness bog the books down. New Moon shows definite improvement from Twilight in the narrative, but both books suffer from their style. 

The characterization is also worrisome. Bella is eternally clumsy and needs Edward to save her; her desire for Edward must be controlled because if they succumb to it she will die. The characters, especially Edward, are sometimes one-dimensional, and this takes away from the story’s power. 

Whether you love them or hate them, there’s no getting away from Twilight. What this series has done for YA is get people talking about the genre, and looking for more, and that is perhaps its greatest strength. 

Vampire Spectacular: The Intro

As I mentioned in my very first post, I am keeping this blog for a Young Adult resources and services class I am taking at library school. The class is preparing us, Future Librarians, for the topics and issues we’ll face in Young Adult services. There is one topic that is so pressing right now in YA services that it comes up at least once, no fail, every class. That issue? Vampires. 

The YA world is crawling with vampires. They are everywhere, and appear in a variety of  forms, from sparkly century-old teenagers to hungry undead villagers in Easter Europe. They’ll suck your blood and steal your heart and leave you looking for another novel. 

You’ll find him in the YA section of your public library

There’s no denying that the current trend in vamp fiction owes a lot to a certain now ubiquitous, highly popular series that has just been made into a ubiquitous and highly popular movie franchise. I read Twilight and New Moon for this project, and for my own interest, because I wanted to know what it was all about. 

For comparison, I also read two other vampire novels: one that was written pre-Twilight  but has several similarities (Look for Me by Moonlight by Mary Downing Hahn, 1997), and one that is a contemporary of Twilight, and an altogether different kind of vampire novel (My Sword Hand is Singing by Marcus Sedgwick, 2007).

So the next three posts are going to be part of a Vampire Spectacular, to give you an idea of what has happened, and what is currently happening, in the crypts of YA fiction today.